Village Builders in Creemore has been in the construction business for over 30 years. We build custom homes and specialize in renovations and additions.

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Looking to build a custom home, a design build is what you want

Looking to build a custom home, a design build is what you want.

If you want to build a custom home, you’ve bought the land and you don’t know where to go from there, then what you need is a contractor that will do what is called “a design build”.

What is a design build?

A design build is when you hire a general contractor to help you design, consult, budget, estimate and then construct your custom home.

What this does is streamline the entire process of building a custom home. Instead of you the homeowner running around to find an architect, work with the architect and then hope that the general contractor you hire can work with the plans that have been created or relying on the architect to send you to a general contractor, you find a contractor that you can trust and work with and they bring you everything you need including the architect to create the plans.

Bringing the architect to you through the general contractor means that the general contractor can control the cost of the designs, the estimating, budgeting and how the house is designed. There are certain ways that a general contractor can help you get the custom home that you want but keep some of the costs down by eliminating certain things that might look good on paper but cost a lot of money to construct.

In our company Village Builders we do this with clients all the time. We help them with the design of their home so that it works with their budget but still has all the flair that a custom home should have in it. What we have found is that it is more important for you to trust and get along with your builder then with the architect that draws the plans. You will work with an architect for a couple of months but you will be working with your general contractor for at least a year or more depending on how large the home will be, you also have to trust your general contractor for all your future warranty on your new custom home.

Finding the general contractor that can help you with the drawings by bringing the architect to you, helping with the design and then the build makes the most sense.

Custom homes are extremely complicated and require a lot of attention from the general contractor and the homeowner as well. When one party controls the entire process from start to finish then the project has less chance of problems and more chance of being completed in a timely manner and on budget.

So when that question comes up, where do we start to build our custom home, start by finding your general contractor first and let them do everything for you.

If you’re looking to build a custom home in Southern Ontario give us Village Builders a call, we can help you with everything. Or simply send me an email at robabbott@villagebuilders.ca